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By Hank Beckman –
Ft. Lauderdale’s Democrat Mayor Dean Trantalis bought a little victim street cred last week.
In the process he demonstrated to the entire country the rancid depths to which the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy has sunk.
After a terrible accident at a LGBTQ Pride Parade where two people were run over by a parade participant in a malfunctioning pickup truck, Trantalis wasted no time in describing the incident as a terrorist attack.
“This is a terrorist attack against the LGBT community,” he told a TV reporter. “This is exactly what it is. Hardly an accident.”
Trantalis went on to say the attack was deliberate and premeditated and that he knew this because, apparently, he’s an expert at interpreting facial expressions.
“You could see it in his face,” Trantalis said.
No investigation was needed to form the Mayor’s opinion; that might reveal some complicating factors—like evidence. No need for that.
Just like there was no need for Barack Obama to wait for an investigation when Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates had his run-in with the Cambridge police after being arrested when it appeared he was breaking into a home that turned out to be his own.
Obama jumped on the opportunity to frame the incident as one where a black man was unfairly suspected of a crime solely because of the color of his skin. Amazingly, Obama even admitted that he didn’t have all the facts of the case, but that didn’t stop him from informing the nation that the police had done something stupid.
Keep in mind that this is coming from a sitting president; the first black president, no less, one that was supposed to hasten the end of racial divisions in America.
Obama also didn’t need to wait for a trial when he informed the nation that the Trayvon Martin death was especially troubling because, if he had a son, he would have looked like Trayvon. Subtle.
But Obama is just the most prominent—and troubling—example of the left’s many crude attempts in modern times to portray an incident as resulting from some sort of bias without the benefit of a credible investigation.
No evidence was required when the Duke LaCrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper. Much of the press, and the local District Attorney, jumped on the case as if it were proven by the mere allegation. Duke faculty members even attacked the lacrosse players in writing, leading one to wonder about the actual value of a Duke education.
The hoax fell apart, and the D.A. was disbarred and spent a night in jail for withholding exculpatory evidence. But you won’t find many apologies about it from anyone on the left, and few have pointed out that what he really was after was black votes in his upcoming race for re-election.
No evidence was needed when Rolling Stone Magazine published a phony, 9,000-word story about a rape at a University of Virginia frat house. (Although to its credit, the Washington Post did a terrific job picking apart the story) As it turns out, the frat house didn’t even have a function on the night in question and one of the key figures in the narrative was a fictional character.
When Jussie Smollett claimed to be attacked by two MAGA-hat wearing thugs on Chicago’s North Side on the coldest night in a decade, spinning a story so unlikely that the cops smelled a rat from the start, no evidence or investigation was necessary for people all over the country—even Donald Trump—to declare it a despicable hate crime. Based solely on Smollett’s charges, and before an even cursory investigation was done, CNN anchor Brook Baldwin dramatically declared, “this is America, 2019,” and judged the alleged crime, “absolutely despicable.”
Even though hate crime hoaxes involving nooses being used to threaten blacks are commonplace to the point of being a cliche, and should insult the intelligence of the average fourth-grader, Bubba Wallace’s claim of someone hanging a noose in his race car’s garage was deemed altogether believable by media people around the country.
The Covington Catholic kids were judged guilty based on a short video, but later completely exonerated; the murder of eight sex workers in Atlanta was widely described as an anti-Asian crime before it was discovered that it was unrelated to race; the list of media people and politicians jumping to conclusions when a hate crime is alleged is long and troubling.
The worst example of hyping supposed bias incidents have been the narratives related to the police-related killings of blacks in recent years. The lies about “hands-up, don’t shoot” in the Mike Brown case, the “I can’t breathe” nonsense in the death of George Floyd, resulted in the disaster of riots that have raged across urban America, killing people and inflicting millions of dollars in property damage.
So why, even with so many examples to warn people off these hoaxes, do so many people still fall for them or materially participate in the spreading of these hoaxes?
Because they often work. Allegations of bias incidents or hate crimes serve as currency with which leftists can purchase any number of benefits.
When Trantalis spoke immediately after the accident, he was purchasing some political capital for the LGBTQ community and the Democratic Party; hate crime hoaxes on college campuses purchase attention for the hoaxer’s cause, and often result in expanded diversity staffs, which are essentially no-show jobs where someone is paid to be a certain race, gender, or sexual orientation; hoaxes allow politicians to purchase support from whatever oppressed group whose support they might need; nonprofits can point to an act of bigotry and reap donations from woke corporations and monied philanthropists.
Reports of hate/bias crimes allow a generally leftist news media to create an social environment that increases support for whatever progressive social policies are at issue at a particular time. Republicans, so afraid they’ll be the next one accused of some sort of bigotry, often rush to condemn reports of hate crimes before all the facts are in. See, we’re not all racists!
Sometimes the hoaxes fall apart quickly, as in the Smollett case. But it remains to be seen if he pays a stiff penalty for his lies. And even if he is punished, he’ll likely remain a hero to many on the left. You might notice that Al Sharpton is a respected member of the Democratic Party; Google Tawana Brawley and marvel at how that’s possible.
It doesn’t matter to the left what catastrophes result when one of their half-baked stories fall apart. Who cares if the narrative of police wantonly killing blacks has hardened into accepted reality that contradicts all available data? The important thing was to drum up support for the Democratic Party in the black community. Remember, the resulting riots were openly encouraged by many on the left, including the person now sitting a heartbeat away from Lincoln’s Chair.
Demonstrating that leftists are impervious to shame, Trantalis couldn’t bring himself to actually apologize, only insisting that he regrets his calling the incident a terrorist attack.
But, and this is a key factor in understanding leftists and their tactics in gaining power, he doesn’t regret his emotions about the incident.
“I don’t regret my feelings,” Trantalis said.
Get that? The facts of a case don’t matter, even when accusing someone of a terrorist attack. The important thing is how the aggrieved person from a victim community feels. That this nonsense comes from an sitting mayor in an significant American city doesn’t speak well for our future.
I’ll apologize for Trantalis, because he really is sorry—a sorry excuse for an elected official and a human being.
He and all the other leftist con-artists pushing hate crime hoaxes on the public are moral degenerates, and they should be shunned by decent people everywhere.